why do i see the great questions on both the real world and c-span? what kind of moment of cultural growth is this anyway…seriously, just today i saw: what is love? who am i? why are all people so pathetic and silly? does anyone like me? do i care at all? is this heaven? is tavis smiley’s covenant with black
america
the
answer?
my great question? is it ok that I have spent ten hours in the whirlpoolie bathtub in my hotel
room (which I got cause it was the last available room)? i’m in pittsburgh with no motivation to make any effort to leave my hotel room – i’m so sleepy and hotel rooms provide a specific type of escape i love and need sometimes. this weekend was heaven…
i’ve been revelling a bit in not caring what folks think or do, not spending time analyzing the actions of others for once. less expectations means more clarity and less disappointment, just staying present. life is definitely more fun this way. this is a new challenge for the virgo: imagine if what other people do has nothing to do with me? lol…
somethings that came to me on a phone call today:
people lose hope then they lose their way
hop on the path that goes debate, night, die, day;
debate, lose, suffer, live
save the day, get that pay
it’s one or the other cause you know we all suckas
and:
i feel like we talk all the time about who is "the realest", and we usually mean who comes from the hood or has organized thousands or has organized period. but i feel like we might get further if we began to gauge real according to vision. a lot of people are walking around in the movement who actually think this social justice work is just as good a place to make a name as any other.
if there’s no self-reflection on self-determination, we can only achieve the same old work and results. i think we don’t live in a just world because so few people have a real sense of what justice is. or freedom. or even love. i know some folks right now who could effect such change in the world, but their lack of real vision makes their hearts and their actions small. i know some folks who aren’t in the "movement" in any official way, but their sense of vision and real foundation in the lovingkindness makes all of their actions, and their long-term impact on the people around them, huge.
this observation has me thinking – what do we all have to do to really get in touch with who we are enough to love that person, forgive that person for all the wandering if necessary, and do what we’re meant to be doing?
the personal conclusions i keep coming to when i really think on this is that i want to focus in on counter-military/anti-war work, and environment. the latter because no matter how you cut it that’s the common space, the tangible thing we all have in common which, as it goes to hell, effects all of us. every community i have worked in or with in the past decade has had large scale environment issues as a backdrop to the immediate problems we faced. and the former because i come from a military family, that’s the community i know, for me going back to do work in my community is really trying to pull folks out of a war zone. this clarity is helping guide my decisions on where to focus my energy. adrienne focused? hot damn…
perhaps its a survival mechanism…the desire by the part of me that lives for justice not to get swallowed up in the rhetoric of comfort. we’ll see how i fair, or if it matters. for now, i’m getting back under the covers of a king size bed in a remote hotel watching matisyahu’s video – the hasidic reggae rapper? yeah man, why not?